BEIJING, Aug. 4(Xinhuanet)-- A project aiming to prevent children of workers with financial difficulties from quitting school has been launched by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions(ACFTU) before the new semester starts in September.

Statistics show that there are more than 2.4 million students with economic difficulties in Chinese universities and colleges. Among them, 1.6 million come from the very poor families.

Chinese trade unions have raised huge sum of funds to support the poor students with the help from all walks of life in recent years.

In 2004, trade unions at various levels provided 290 million yuan(about 36 million US dollars) to 415,000 children of poor workers.

Among the beneficiaries, 228,000 were in primary or junior middle schools, 85,000 were in senior middle schools and 102,000 were in colleges.

At a meeting on Tuesday, Wang Zhaoguo, chairman of the ACFTU, called on the whole society to offer a helping hand to poor students. Enditem